But the wave of ‘naturals’ — that appears to have engaged consumers — has actually been beneficial to home-grown company Dabur India, whose toothpaste market share has grown by a little over 1% in 2016.

In a presentation to investors, Colgate-Palmolive revealed a decline in its combined toothpaste volume market share from 57.4% in 2015 to 55.6% in 2016. HUL’s combined share in toothpastes, with brands Pepsodent and Close-Up, has also eroded by 0.5% to 19.1%. However, Dabur’s combined share has grown from 13.9% in 2015 to 15.3%.

Dant Kanti has emerged as the fastest growing brand, albeit on a small base, gaining 1.5% share in one year to about 3%. Industry experts said this is indicative of the fact that consumers are increasingly adopting natural or ayurvedic products. They added that the growth for Dant Kanti could have also come from new users adopting toothpastes for teeth cleansing as also multibrand users. Industry estimates show that 250 million in India still do not use a toothpaste. While the urban penetration of toothpastes is at a mature 92.3%, rural penetration stands at 74%.

Sunil Duggal, CEO of Dabur, recently told analysts, “The preference for herbal and ayurvedic toothpaste continues to gain traction, as a result of which our market share in the toothpaste category went up by over 100 basis points (1 percentage point) in 2016-17.”

In fiscal year 2017, Dabur’s flagship brand ‘Dabur Red Paste’, with a volume share of 8.5%, has emerged as the No. 3 toothpaste brand in the country by overtaking Cibaca Top (7.5% share). The top two brands of toothpaste are Colgate Dental Cream, with a share of around 29%, and Close-Up, with a share of about 13%.

Recently, Patanjali Ayurved announced that its annual turnover had crossed Rs 10,000 crore in the fiscal year 2017. Of this, Rs 940 crore came from Dant Kanti alone.

Following Dant Kanti’s success, Colgate went into an overdrive and launched a new ayurvedic variant under Cibaca. An Edelweiss Research report on Colgate-Palmolive said the natural segment is there to stay in the market.

“Till now, Cibaca Vedshakti had been doing well for the company and logged share gains in certain regions of launch. Cibaca Vedshakti enjoys market share of 0.5-0.6% on national basis, while in the states where the company has launched the product it is upwards of 1% (north and east India). Colgate significantly increased its investment in Cibaca Vedshakti and gained share. The company will be carrying out more innovations and have new launches in this segment,” the report said.